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University of Florida

Florida scientists to send seeds to ISS to study farming solutions for Earth’s harsh conditions


As drought and extreme heat test American farmers more than ever, University of Florida researchers are looking to another harsh environment to create durable crops: space.  

Wagner Vendrame, professor in the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Science (UF/IFAS) environmental horticulture department and part of UF’s Astraeus Space Institute, will send four types of UF-bred seeds to the International Space Station on Thursday afternoon on the payload of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Cape Canaveral launch will take a manned crew to the ISS via SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.  

Highlights

  • UF researchers are sending seeds to the International Space Station on Thursday to study how spaceflight affects plant genetics and resilience. 
  • The goal is to develop crops that can better withstand extreme Earth conditions like drought, heat and cold by learning from space-induced genetic changes. 
  • This experiment is part of a global collaboration aimed at advancing both space farming and climate-resilient agriculture on Earth. 

The seeds – strawberries from the Tampa Bay region, two types of Florida orchids and a type of turf grass – will remain untouched on the space station for about a week and will return on the next scheduled return trip to Earth, at which point Vendrame will germinate the seeds and test the genes of the grown plants for changes that only come from space flight.  

Join us for the Crew 11 launch and liftoff of Dr. Wagner Vendrame's experiment
Thursday, July 31 at 11 a.m.at the Reitz Union atrium.

This isn’t only an important step toward understanding how to grow plants in space – which will be important one day for food and air scrubbing on longterm space missions and efforts to colonize Mars and the Moon – but also could reveal insights about how to artificially adapt seeds to harsh conditions so they can be stronger to endure scarcity and intense weather conditions on Earth, he said.  

“Space is the ultimate high-stress environment for plants. On Earth, the extreme environments we have to contend with include heat waves, drought and hard freezes,” he said. “This could be a way of generating more crops that are resilient to those kinds of stressors.”  

His research is part of a space farming project led by Jaguar Space, a space strategy company, and UF is collaborating with EMBRAPA, Brazil’s agricultural research arm, for payload access. They are part of a multi-national group of researchers who will send seeds on payloads to the ISS during this launch, with seeds hailing from Nigeria, Pakistan and Argentina, among other nations.  

Genetic testing of the plants, as compared to seeds of the same types grown on Earth in Vendrame’s lab, will give the research team a comparison of how specific plants change when they go through the stress of microgravity and the harsh conditions of reentry to Earth, he said.  

UF already has a history of testing plants in space. The horticulture department’s Space Plants Lab previously sent seeds of thale cress, known scientifically as Arabidopsis thaliana, to the ISS and found genetic changes in the plants from the experience, setting the stage for this new experiment with other types of plants and crops.  

The strawberries came from the lab of Vance Whitaker, horticulture professor at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center; the orchids are from Vendrame’s lab; and the bahiagrass was part of UF’s seed repository.